I Hate It Here…

Yulia didn’t care much for the Uzbeks. She had made this clear to me several times, in the way that many Russians did – they looked down on the Uzbeks for what they deemed their conservative and primitive culture and ways, and they assumed that you did too, since, as a white foreigner your were a “European,” like them.

She couldn’t speak Uzbek. Perhaps she could a little, after all, she was forced to learn it at school, but she refused to speak it. “Why should I,” she would say. “It’s a useless language except for speaking to Uzbeks at the bazaar.”

She had no Uzbek friends. And though Uzbek was the official language of the country, many Russians like Yulia bore such an attitude. She spoke with the same bitterness of elderly Russians in Uzbekistan, recalling the good old days of the Soviet Union, when the Russians were the elites. Now, the tables were turned. Uzbek national pride was restored; new generations of Uzbeks were growing up barely speaking Russian. Uzbeks from the provinces came to the cities to fill the vacated homes of Russians, Ukranians, Germans, Jews and other “Europeans” who had emigrated.

Moreover, it seemed to irritate her that I had learned quite a bit of the language, thanks to Sherzod, and would speak it at any opportunity that I could, for example with our taxi drivers as well as with my Uzbek colleagues at the office. “What are you trying to do? What are you trying to prove?” She would ask. And I would never answer her. I didn’t feel that I should be ashamed for trying to speak the language or find a place for myself within Uzbek society.

That night, we took a gypsy taxi home to my place from dinner. I sat in the front next to the driver and Yulia sat in the back alone. The driver, who was an old man, and I guessed was someone who worked in agriculture, because of the unpleasant smell in the car, was listening to Radio Free Europe’s Uzbek service about a recent sensation that filled the rumor mills of the bazaars and tea houses and wherever else Uzbeks congregated.

On the internet, a series of articles were circulating with compromising materials about the inner workings of the country’s government. Penned under the pseudonym Usman Haknazarov, the articles provided some sinister theories about who was behind the 14 bombings that rocked Tashkent in 1999; bombings that the government had attributed as masterminded by a cabal of militant Islamic fundamentalists in consort with exiled political opposition. The articles proposed that it was an insider job, a threat by powerful figures within the corridors of power that represented a regional clan rivaling the dominant one.

“Incredible story, no?” I said to the driver in Uzbek at the end of the news block. He looked at me surprised by the fact that I was a non-Uzbek speaking Uzbek to him.

“In Uzbekistan, anything is possible,” he said dryly. “I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.”

We were approaching my street. “But don’t you think that because there is no information in the country that people are just about willing to believe any crazy conspiracy theory?” I asked and indicated that we had arrived at our destination.

“This is true,” he said, stopping the car. “But the 1999 bombings were obviously staged. Each bomb going off where the president had just been, each bomb just missing him. And the investigation they held afterwards – nonsense.”

The car had stopped. Yulia spoke up from the back seat in English, her shirt collar pulled up over her nose. “Can we get out of here, it smells like shit.”

“Just wait a minute,” I told her. “I want to talk with this man. Wait outside.”

She walked out and I spoke for a few moments with the driver. We introduced ourselves, he asked me what I was doing in Uzbekistan, and said that it was very nice that I had learned to speak Uzbek language. It was a mark of respect for the people of the country.

I indicated that I needed to go and pulled out money from my pocket, which I laid out on the dashboard. He handed it back to me. “You’re my guest, please.”

“I insist,” I said, putting the money back on the dashboard. “I always enjoy speaking with people who are willing to be open. Most people are too afraid to speak their minds.”

“Of course they are,” he said. “The consequences can be terrible. But these days, things are getting so bad that it’s just impossible to sit silently and bear it with a bowed head.”

I left the car and walked to Yulia who stood by the front door to the building scowling. “I’m sorry,” I said resignedly, but she continued to have this angry grimace. “Come on, what did I do that was so terrible?”

She didn’t respond to me the entire elevator ride up, or when I unlocked the door to my apartment, or when we took off our shoes by the front door. I walked into the living room, sat down on the sofa, not knowing what had soured her mood and realizing that soon would probably our first argument.

“I hate it here,” she said still standing and trying to light up her cigarette with her flickering lighter low on fluid. For a moment, I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by here; here meaning with me, in my apartment, in Tashkent, in Uzbekistan.

“Then you should leave.” I said, realizing that she meant Uzbekistan.

“I will,” she said, finally lighting up. “I don’t know how you can stand it here.”

“Well, that’s my business, isn’t it? It’s my problem if I happen to like it here.”

“Of course you do. They kiss your ass just because you’re foreign.” She said blowing smoke out of her mouth. Perhaps she was right; they did treat foreign guests well in this country. Hospitality was the tradition of the land. On the other hand, I treated people with respect – something, which I think she didn’t, and therefore, it came back to me. But I didn’t see the point in lecturing her.

“Yulia, what’s your problem? Did something happen to you today? Wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something?”

“You just don’t understand anything here,” she said, and I was immediately offended and I suppose she knew I would be. After all, to say this to a journalist – someone who was supposed to know things, understand things – was most likely intended as an affront. But I was determined not to let Yulia’s bitterness poison my attitude. “You just don’t even see it – how bad the people are here. How is it that you are so blind?”

I just nodded my head and said that I was tired, that I was going to bed. I knew that there was a lot wrong with Uzbekistan, and that life was difficult. But for reasons I could not articulate, I liked it and there was certainly no point in reasoning with Yulia or with any negative Russian like her who was set in their thinking that the Uzbeks were bad and wild and that they lived in a terrible country. And in that moment, I realized that there lay an untraverseable gap between me and Yulia. We saw the world around us differently and there was not likely any way to change it.

She said she wasn’t tired, switched on the TV to Nickelodeon’s children’s programs. I went into the other room and lay there with the lights on, eventually dozing off. She roused me from my sleep when she came into the room later, to have sex. Though I was happy to oblige, something felt a little different, she felt a little dry inside, and something had changed.  ¶ 9:24 AM